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AbstractHistoryArchive Description
Alice is entranced by the aesthetics of technology and, in every aeroplane flight, every Xerox machine, every neon sign, sees the poetry of modernity. Mr Sakamoto, a survivor of the atomic bomb, is an expert on Alexander Graham Bell. Like Alice, he is culturally and geographically displaced. The pair forge an unlikely friendship as Mr Sakamoto regales Alice with stories of twentieth-century invention. His own knowledge begins to inform her writing, and these two solitary beings become a mutual support for each other a long way from home. - Back cover
Notes
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Epigraph: 'Let us sculpt in hopeless silence all our dreams of speaking' - Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Other Formats
- Also braille, sound recording,
Works about this Work
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The Mixed Temporalities of Transnationalism in Dreams of Speaking
2017
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Journal of Australian Studies , March vol. 41 no. 1 2017; (p. 32-46) 'This article explores the mixed temporalities inherent in Gail Jones’s treatment of transnational grief in Dreams of Speaking(2006). I examine the novel’s interests in modernity and temporality and show how the atomic bombing of Nagasaki, in the novel, creates grief that is shared across national boundaries. The novel explores the coexistence of the modern and the unmodern, and Jones exemplifies this in the spectral nature of grief; it haunts the two protagonists throughout Dreams of Speaking. This article reads the coexistence of modernity and the unmodern alongside the ways in which Japan unsettles Eurocentric notions of colonial modernity (with its insistence on shared temporalities of progress) by having been a colonial power as well as by undertaking substantial modernisation in the postwar period. I employ Harry Harootunian’s notion of “mixed temporalities” to show the transnational dimensions in the cross-cultural interaction this novel facilitates. I compare the novel’s treatment of the bomb, and of temporality, to Salvador Dalí’sThe Disintegration of the Persistence of Memory(1954) and highlight the transnational sentiments in Jones’s treatments of the tropes of water and resonance.' (Publication abstract) -
Pushing the Boundaries in Australian Studies.
2017
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Journal of Australian Studies , March vol. 41 no. 1 2017; (p. 1-2)'An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses various reports within the issue on topics including young women of Australia, Indigenous music, and a book review of "Dreams of Speaking".' (Publication abstract)
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Paratactic Stammers : Temporality in the Novels of Gail Jones
2016
single work
essay
— Appears in: JASAL , vol. 16 no. 1 2016;'Norman Saadi Nikro’s essay, ‘Paractatic Stammers: Temporality in the Novels of Gail Jones,’ sets out to explore how Jones’ ‘sense of fascination and wonder with the technology and culture of modernism informs the phenomenology and tenor of her novelistic style, especially the characters that emerge through the wave lengths of this style.’ Addressing himself to Jones’ literary fiction published to date, Nikro seeks to ‘track the duration in her novels whereby memory, history and story are experienced by her characters as something like intersections, intervals nor spacings, taut and tense folds or pleats in which time is riven by “a strange accession to memory and speech,” as the character Perdita comes to learn in Jones’s Sorry (202).’ Drawing in part on the work of Mikhail Bakhtin and on Gilles Deleuze’s ‘engagement with the work of Bergson,’ Nikro examines in Jones the ‘relational contiguity of parts whose variable movements and orientations to one another bring about a transfiguration of their subjective capacities (as in Perdita’s realisation of her stuttering as a relational dynamic).’ ‘Paractatic Stammers: Temporality in the Novels of Gail Jones,’ offers a rich and original reading of Jones’ fiction, both sympathetic and critically rigorous. Echoing Jones’ own views on modernity, Nikro traces in her novels a poetics of modernity that inflects both the writing and the thematics of the work. ‘Jones’s prose style,’ he suggests, ‘what she calls “a kind of prose poetics’” (Royo Grasa 1), calls attention to the gaps and intervals by which the temporality of narration is not only possible, but rendered a vacant site for the stammer of an interruptive image or voice encompassing an alternative engagement of time and its graphic imprints.’ Like Kirkpatrick, Nikro too highlights the forceful way in which an Australian author develops a distinct narrative voice, in the case of Jones one informed by a constant intertwining of local and global aesthetic and political sensibilities.' (Editor's introduction)
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Book Review – Dreams of Speaking by Gail Jones
2011
single work
review
— Appears in: Booklover Book Reviews 2011;
— Review of Dreams of Speaking 2006 single work novel -
Australian Literature Inside and Out
2009
single work
criticism
— Appears in: JASAL , Special Issue 2009;
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Twists Turn Dreams into Nightmare
2006
single work
review
— Appears in: The Sun-Herald , 29 January 2006; (p. 66)
— Review of Dreams of Speaking 2006 single work novel -
The Gift of Sound and Vision
2006
single work
review
— Appears in: The Age , 4 February 2006; (p. 24)
— Review of Dreams of Speaking 2006 single work novel -
Yearning Expressed in Elegant Prose
2006
single work
review
— Appears in: The Canberra Times , 4 February 2006; (p. 13)
— Review of Dreams of Speaking 2006 single work novel -
An Image of Sound Waves
2006
single work
review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , February no. 278 2006; (p. 26)
— Review of Dreams of Speaking 2006 single work novel -
Ring Cycle
2006
single work
review
— Appears in: The Bulletin , 14 February vol. 124 no. 6507 2006; (p. 68-69)
— Review of Dreams of Speaking 2006 single work novel -
Parallel Lives
2006
single work
biography
— Appears in: The Sydney Morning Herald , 11-12 February 2006; (p. 20-21) -
On Intimate Terms
2006
single work
column
— Appears in: The Sunday Age , 19 February 2006; (p. 16) -
The Interview : Gail Jones
Michele McCrea
(interviewer),
2006
single work
interview
— Appears in: Wet Ink , Winter no. 3 2006; (p. 26-29) -
Gail Jones' "Light Writing": Memory and the Photo-graph
2006
single work
criticism
— Appears in: JASAL , no. 5 2006; (p. 192-208) 'This article traces Jones's interest in photography/film and the ways in which metaphors of light, shadow and mirroring shape narratives.' (p.192) -
Blood on the Plot
2006
single work
column
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 16-17 September 2006; (p. 40) Matchett compares the merits of three literary novels: Siri Hustvedt's What I Loved, Haruki Murakami's Sputnik Sweetheart and Gail Jones's Dreams of Speaking.
Awards
- 2008 shortlisted International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award
- 2007 shortlisted Kibble Literary Awards — Nita Kibble Literary Award
- 2007 shortlisted New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards — Christina Stead Prize for Fiction
- 2007 shortlisted Miles Franklin Literary Award
- 2006 longlisted Women's Prize for Fiction (UK)
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Paris,
cFrance,cWestern Europe, Europe,